This Man is Still Very Bullish on RIM’s Success

Every investor wants the company he or she is invested in to outperform expectations. But a mutual fund owner who has 12.2 million shares of RIM is placing big bets on the company’s BlackBerry 10 operating system, due out in January of next year. The company hopes that the OS and RIM’s new smartphones will be a win. If not, it could end up losing big.

“People do like to use the keyboard, and there is a big embedded base,” Donald Yacktman of Yacktman Asset Management told Bloomberg on Wednesday. “This company could be worth a lot more.”

Sure, it could be. But that’s totally going to rely on how consumers react to its new portfolio and if consumers aren’t already scared away from RIM’s BlackBerry brand.

Yacktman’s bet has already paid off millions, Bloomberg noted. The company’s investment helped it make $30 – $54 million as of yesterday’s close. That’s a small drop in the company’s overall $7.1 billion fund, however, but it’s clear Yacktman knows what he’s doing. His firm’s investments have returned about 12 percent over since 2007.

Other financial analysts aren’t as bullish on RIM. Earlier this week, Morgan Stanley analyst Ehud Gelblum said he believes BlackBerry 10 “has a low chance of success” and that the operating system is “too late” for RIM.